Twitter's mandatory link shortener, t.co, was down • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitter's mandatory link shortener, t.co, was down

#21

Post by mseebach » Mon, Oct 08, 2012, 6:47 AM UTC

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #17

mseebach wrote: post #15

I can see how Twitters length-limit led to external link shorteners, but once they took it in-house, why expose it? Why not just say that a link (of any length) "costs" n characters, and handle the shortening/expansion on the backend? What is the benefit of exposing the mechanism?

Backwards compatibility.

It could be as simple as a flag on the API: Do you want shortened links and a guarantee that the message is less than 140 characters, or full link, with a risk that it will "spill over". As most (all?) clients expand links anyway, they'd be choosing the latter.

Re: Twitter's mandatory link shortener, t.co, was down

#22

Post by joebadmo » Mon, Oct 08, 2012, 6:48 AM UTC

mdonahoe wrote: post #13

Am I supposed to be mad at twitter for forcing me to use their unreliable link shortener? How is this any different from the countless times twitter.com was down? It's a centralized service, things happen.

Which is why we shouldn't use centralized services like Twitter. I'm rooting for http://tent.io/ myself.

Re: Twitter's mandatory link shortener, t.co, was down

#23

Post by guelo » Mon, Oct 08, 2012, 6:50 AM UTC

kcl wrote: post #19

mseebach wrote: post #15

I can see how Twitters length-limit led to external link shorteners, but once they took it in-house, why expose it? Why not just say that a link (of any length) "costs" n characters, and handle the shortening/expansion on the backend? What is the benefit of exposing the mechanism?

Twitter wants to route links through their servers for at least two reasons: 1. Analytics and monitoring. (Google's results page uses the same technique.) 2. Disabling malicious and unwanted links.

Google search does not use the same technique.

Re: Twitter's mandatory link shortener, t.co, was down

#24

Post by damncabbage » Mon, Oct 08, 2012, 6:55 AM UTC

guelo wrote: post #23

kcl wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter wants to route links through their servers for at least two reasons: 1. Analytics and monitoring. (Google's results page uses the same technique.) 2. Disabling malicious and unwanted links.

Google search does not use the same technique.

What's the difference?

* User browses on Twitter, clicks link in tweet pointing to t.co, is redirected off to the page where they wanted to go.

* User searches on Google, clicks link in search result pointing to google.com, is redirected off to the page where they wanted to go.

Admittedly it only happens with half of the search results of the first page (I think; it seems to vary), but it's very much the same technique.

Re: Twitter's mandatory link shortener, t.co, was down

#25

Post by kapitalx » Mon, Oct 08, 2012, 6:56 AM UTC

kcl wrote: post #19

mseebach wrote: post #15

I can see how Twitters length-limit led to external link shorteners, but once they took it in-house, why expose it? Why not just say that a link (of any length) "costs" n characters, and handle the shortening/expansion on the backend? What is the benefit of exposing the mechanism?

Twitter wants to route links through their servers for at least two reasons: 1. Analytics and monitoring. (Google's results page uses the same technique.) 2. Disabling malicious and unwanted links.

On the google note, their URL redirects have dramatically slowed down my experience. They seems to have a very slow redirect.

Re: Twitter's mandatory link shortener, t.co, was down

#26

Post by stevewilhelm » Mon, Oct 08, 2012, 6:57 AM UTC

For most Twitter's users, it is not a mission critical service.

It could be regularly down for hours at a time with little to no effect.

They'll just come back later.

Re: Twitter's mandatory link shortener, t.co, was down

#27

Post by x5315 » Mon, Oct 08, 2012, 7:01 AM UTC

beagle3 wrote: post #14

generj wrote: post #3

I'm sure someone is having an interesting conversation right now. Twitter needs to stop having these embarrassing down-ages if they want to be a permanent player in the tech field.

They've had them all along. Didn't stop them from getting to where they are. Why should they start caring now? From a cost/benefit perspective, it is probably not worth it to them to do whatever is needed to have a six nines uptime.

We care. We're working on it.

Re: Twitter's mandatory link shortener, t.co, was down

#28

Post by kcl » Mon, Oct 08, 2012, 7:08 AM UTC

kapitalx wrote: post #25

kcl wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter wants to route links through their servers for at least two reasons: 1. Analytics and monitoring. (Google's results page uses the same technique.) 2. Disabling malicious and unwanted links.

On the google note, their URL redirects have dramatically slowed down my experience. They seems to have a very slow redirect.

Redirects of all types are especially bad on mobile devices since they require a pointless new round trip, which anecdotally seems to double the amount of time it takes for a webpage to start loading.

Since Facebook and many other services do this on their mobile apps by default, I am surprised I don't hear more complaints about it. Twice through the cell tower is too long.

Re: Twitter's mandatory link shortener, t.co, was down

#29

Post by lloeki » Mon, Oct 08, 2012, 7:14 AM UTC

mdonahoe wrote: post #13

Am I supposed to be mad at twitter for forcing me to use their unreliable link shortener? How is this any different from the countless times twitter.com was down? It's a centralized service, things happen.

> Am I supposed to be mad at twitter for forcing me to use their unreliable link shortener?

Yes.

> How is this any different from the countless times twitter.com was down?

This is different because if I read a tweet cached in my client or archived somewhere I can't reach an external resource because a middleman is down.

> It's a centralized service, things happen.

The WWW is decentralized by design. Link shorteners, and reliance on them, make it obnoxiously centralized. The tweet itself should contain the full link and shorten it only on display [0] [1].

[0] https://alpha.app.net/marco/post/783814

[1] https://alpha.app.net/marco/post/783881

Re: Twitter's mandatory link shortener, t.co, was down

#30

Post by gjulianm » Mon, Oct 08, 2012, 7:21 AM UTC

lloeki wrote: post #29

mdonahoe wrote: post #13

Am I supposed to be mad at twitter for forcing me to use their unreliable link shortener? How is this any different from the countless times twitter.com was down? It's a centralized service, things happen.

> Am I supposed to be mad at twitter for forcing me to use their unreliable link shortener? Yes. > How is this any different from the countless times twitter.com was down? This is different because if I read a tweet cached in my client or archived somewhere I can't reach an external resource because a middleman is down. > It's a centralized service, things happen. The WWW is decentralized by design. Link shorteners,…

Actually...

https://dev.twitter.com/docs/tweet-entities

The tweet response contains the full link.